My son the Petri dish

Now that I’m fairly sure he’s not going to die, I can tell you that my youngest, a senior in high school, has both mononucleosis and West Nile Fever. This seems like overkill, and somewhat unfair.

What I’ve learned about West Nile:

About 80% of the people who are infected experience no symptoms at all

About 20% of the people who are infected get WN Fever, a disease that is curiously like mono, with fever, headache, body aches, skin rash or swollen lymph glands

About 1% of the people who are infected get WN encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) or WN meningitis (inflammation of the meninges, the tissue surrounding the brain & spinal cord) – this is the scary West Nile

10 Comments

Heavens, Katja! I’ve known someone in that 1% (she recovered from the crisis phase, but she’ll have some lasting neurological issues as a “souvenir”). Sounds like your boy is getting better now, good to hear that. Mono is bad enough when you’re young, let alone added to something more serious. Best wishes for his continued improvement.

Thanks, everyone! He had one scary painful neck/killer headache day, but it resolved and wasn’t meningitis. That was day I discovered that my husband (who was at home with him) didn’t know that a stiff neck with fever and headache could be a sign of meningitis – I was calling home every two hours trying to decide if it was time to go the emergency room, and my husband was trying to figure out how to get my son to go to school. We were definitely living in different universes that day.